


So Long to Learn

by Lang (orphan_account)



Category: Wicked Gentlemen - Ginn Hale
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-02 00:05:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Lang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edward Talbott in Hells Below.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Long to Learn

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Hippocrates: “The life so short, the craft so long to learn."

This book, which was given to me by my wife, who I love in spirit and body, and in every form she chooses to take, will be my diary, the diary of Edward Talbott. Although Joan intends for this to be a medical journal for the recording of various uniquely Prodigal ailments and their possible remedies, I haven’t the heart to tell her that I began such a project within a week of my treating Prodigals, and have seventeen notebooks stashed away for that purpose. Instead, this book will help to cleanse the mind, if not the body. I hope to write truthfully and frequently.

Edward Talbott

 

I have written little in the weeks since our anniversary, but let me begin with the most important details of my life, my reflections on the transition to living among my wife’s people, far from the experiences I had heretofore known.

Life is getting better, which was not to say that my life here necessitates too much improvement, or that coming to Hells Below has left me a much improved person. Both of these statements are probably true, but with the constant ebb and flow of patients – children injured through play or neglect, with dirt under their long black fingernails, hesitant and miserable Prodigal women with dulled eyes the color of the sun, and even those who, like myself, were recovering from the Inquisition – I do not have too much time to think on it. I have always looked on the bright side, as it were, and I find myself concentrating on the reinstatement of my marriage more than on the noxious smells that erupt from the ground at odd times and the haze of putrid dark that clings to every battered building in sight. 

The best thing about me is that I have always loved Joan. I have loved every small, feminine, human touch of hers, from the delicate bridge of the nose, which she shares with her brother, to the gentle, ladylike loops and curls of her signature. These things are mostly erased now that I have found her again, but I am discovering that I loved the feral touches to her that existed even in the earlier days of our marriage. Her ferocity has grown; she is leaner, hungrier, and louder than I remember, and the hints of her ancestry – strange, but not unwelcome smells, and the problem of her nails – are now blossomed into the markings of a full Prodigal. This, too, I love, perhaps because I have always loved it, but perhaps because it seems less strange now that I live among Prodigals.

Joan has a tendency to be apologetic, still, when she speaks to me, as if she should have given me more of a chance to understand her. I was formerly of the opinion that she should have indeed, that I was her husband, and would love her no matter what sort of demon she turned out to be. Three months here, however, have allowed me to realize that being driven here by desperation has gifted me with an understanding of Prodigals, themselves often desperate when they come to me. This is not something I could have seized upon, I think, if Joan had ever tried to be truly honest with me. It takes a bone-deep fear of the Inquisitors to comprehend these slums, and why so many remain here, miserable and browbeaten. The former doctor Edward Talbott, who never once stood half-naked and bent under the fear that another Inquisitor would seize him, another false confession might have to be signed, would not have comprehended the patients that he treats on a daily basis, who approach with varying degrees of anger, fear, and shame at being yet another battered Prodigal.

I do not want to discuss my patients, though I fear they, like Joan, exact too much power on my psyche to not creep into my mind, interconnected as they are with every aspect of my life. I must again remind myself that this is not to be a work journal, only my small, oft-forgotten diary. This is a book of the thoughts and perhaps even ill-contrived opinions of a man living with Prodigals, not a doctor’s treatise on how best to treat them. Forgive me, however, if Doctor Talbott overtakes Edward, who is altogether a weaker, lazier and more sensitive creature. I cannot help myself when I refer to my employment; it is almost the whole of my person, and only a fraction of me, a young, naïve human, is a friend to Will, an ardent lover of Joan, and a half-fearful admirer of his Prodigal neighbors, can be called plain old Edward.

Edward Talbott

 

I write again, though I am bone-tired. I have not said too much about where I am working now, which is Good Commons, because I do not want this book to ever become a part of an Inquisitor’s concocted accusations against an innocent. I will at least emphatically state that this is not an unheard-of occurrence. I have lived it and I do not wish to relive it. I almost wish I believed myself paranoid, as the old Edward would have, but no one here will contradict me if I say we have a right to be anxious. It is difficult to talk to my old friends, because Will is gone away, and the set from school and at my old club, though they are mostly a good sort, would not understand me as I am now, and, truth be told, I have a difficult time getting out to see them. I can leave Hells Below now, of course, since Will cleared things up. It is simply that I am too busy to ever even leave the building. Waterstone sends word (though he doesn’t dare come himself) because Will dropped him such a sensation, and he hopes I can follow up with something of my own. I desire to be as brave as my brother in law, but I also feel that the worst thing I can do for my patients is to expose them to the merciless glare of the _Daily World_. Raddly has come twice, and I have asked for his help in the most veiled ways I can think of. I do not blame him for not wanting to live daily in Hells Below, as I do, but we could dearly use an anatomist.

Edward Talbott

 

I think I shall write in the morning, before the state of my patients has driven me to depression. I have friends here, though I am afraid to mention them outright. Let me summarize, if not friends, then at least those I around me. The most I will say of Jack is that he is enterprising, and the most I will say of Mica is that she and Joan dislike eachother immensely. This has to do with Peter Roffcale, which makes upsets me not a little bit. There is no reason for this. He and Joan never had relations, and his life, like those of some of Joan’s other friends, was both unlucky and short. He was handsome while he lived. I have a patient, what looks to be the first of my eight or so daily cases of the pox. I must go. I do not want to leave on this note. I am handsome, too.

E.T.


End file.
